The invention is based on a priority application EP 06 291 040.1 which is hereby incorporated by reference.
The present invention relates to a method for handover of a User Equipment from a source base station to a target base station.
The present invention also relates to a base station for use as a source base station and as a candidate or target base station in a radio communication network comprising a number of User Equipments.
In mobile radio telecommunication systems, in particular systems comprising OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex) interfaces, such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), a plurality of radio cells is attached to and served by respective base stations. If a mobile end terminal or User Equipment is moving on the periphery of a given radio cell and is about to enter an adjacent radio cell, attachment of said User Equipment can be transferred from a currently serving base station (also referred to as source base station or source eNodeB) to a target base station or target eNodeB. The corresponding procedure is commonly referred to as handover and is well-known to a person skilled in the art.
In order to perform a successful and beneficial handover, at least some of the following basic information should be evaluated before execution of the handover:                interference caused by the User Equipment in a candidate base station,        quality of the uplink radio channel between User Equipment and handover candidate base station,        potential benefit if the User Equipment performs the handover into the radio cell associated with the candidate base station,        timing advance for the User Equipment in case the candidate base station is elected as target base station.        
However, in currently known radio communication systems, e. g. the above-mentioned OFDM-based LTE system, there is no possibility to evaluate the basic information listed above since the latter is only locally available.